A time capsule of the greatest financial mania in the history of mankind, told in real-time by regular folks and patriots. May future generations better understand the madness of crowds, and how power and money corrupt.

32 comments:

Nice work genius. Why is that you morons find it so hard to understand that you are paying for this military industrial complex? The term "military industrial complex" was not coined by Ron Paul as the video of Eisenhower shows.

Why the immediate hostility? Why can't you present a reasonable argument if you disagree?

"Shove your Ron Paul BS up your ass" is not an argument. It doesn't even make any sense.

Do you really think the US government needs to spend trillions of tax payer dollars on defense to protect you from some arabs in caves 4000 miles away?

It's an industry like any other and industries use advertising (propaganda) to improve sales. The advertising of the military industrial complex is the "war on terror". Of course they are going to hype the threat of terror and any other potential threats to increase their profit margins. Military spending is HUGE business.

PS - George W Bush doesn't give a damn about you or any of the American people. Learn a little about the history of the Bushes. The have a long history of deceit and cronyism. They have always been total opportunists that have been profiting from war since WWII. Read some books on them - don't believe me you fake conservative fool.

Read Pat Buchanan's *Republic, not and Empire: Reclaiming America's Destiny*! That's a book that comes from a real Republican!

The US should stop playing the role of a world policeman, the sooner the better. The so called "war on terror" is war on the freedom of American people. I'm not afraid of the Arabs, I'm afraid of the Bush administration and the neo-cons behind it.

The only rational response to a couple of hijacked planes is to end social security and medicare use that (borrowed) money to fund further increased defense spending. Anything short of that response is a "pre 9/11" mind set.

Truer words have never been spoken!Well done Keith...I've been sayig this for 25 years...after spending many years overseas.The entire world snickers behind our back, spending nothing on their own defense.Where's my farm-aid?

The only rational response to a couple of hijacked planes is to end social security and medicare use that (borrowed) money to fund further increased defense spending. Anything short of that response is a "pre 9/11" mind set.

I don't know whether you're being sarcastic or serious James becuase that's one of the dumbest and most ignorant comments I've heard in a while...

What makes you think more defense spending is going to make America safer from the terrorists when this massive defense and intelligence bureaucracy was not enough to stop 9/11 from happening? How is spending more money going to improve on an already massively funded defense and intelligence bureaucracy?

And to top that off we know that the CIA and the FBI had prior warnings of the attacks and so did foreign intelligence agencies. The Bush Administration actually obstructed investigations into Bin Laden before 9/11. So when a multi hundred billion dollar defense and intelligence system fails to act on warnings like these then maybe the fact that it is so bloated and compartmentalized that it becomes ineffective? Have you ever thought about that instead of taking the dumb reactionary point of view like so many people do?

The whole military industrial complexis the biggest ongoing scam hoisted on the American public for generations.The housing ponzi scheme is mickey-mouse chump change compared to these corporate criminals and militaristic hypocrites hiding behind the flag and phony "defense"policies.

Ike said that in 56, two years before the launch of Sputnic ignighted the technology race.

We've hashed thru this before, but this is worth considering,

Military spending has two incredibly important side effects.

First, it’s a social program (and probably the most effective one). Anyone in this country can escape any ghetto by going into the military, build in-demand skills, learn about teamwork (and everything else the incompetent public school system failed to teach them), and exit it employable. This is what gives an OPPORTUNITY to every US citizen regardless of what a crappy situation they may have been born into. This part of the defense budget goes into paychecks for service men and women and is about 70% of the total defense budget. When paychecks are spent the money largely goes back into the U.S. economy (it’s not sent out of the country for the most part).

The second side effect is that many technologies are invented and refined on the military budget. For instance the development of jet aircraft, computers, the internet, and telecommunications (who do you think sent up the first satellites?) were on the US military budget.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darpa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#Creation

These developments have a huge effect on driving the overall economy forward, and are completely ancillary to it’s primary purpose of defending the country and promoting stability (which has to be done).

The total military spending is now $1.1 trillion, when you count defense/homeland security related spending in other budgetary categories (i.e., nuclear warhead maintenance in the Department of Energy budget).

These numbers are from Chalmers Johnson.

I believe this is before war appropriations, so we could see military spending hit $1.5 trillion in 2009.

These developments have a huge effect on driving the overall economy forward, and are completely ancillary to it’s primary purpose of defending the country and promoting stability (which has to be done).

You fail to consider the opportunity cost and the burden that the massive military spending puts on American business, families and individuals. Who is to say that if those trillions of dollars had remained in the private sector and used in private research and development that even greater progress would not have been made? And the massive burden of taxation and monetary inflation imposed upon families actually works against their prospects at gaining a decent education and gainful employment.

So you have described some benefits that the massive military budget has produced but what we don't see is the opportunity cost or the opportunity lost by spending and printing all of that money for military spending and other bloated government programs.

It's already clear that all of this spending has had a massively detrimental effect on the middle class, the national debt and the depreciation of the dollar. It's spending that can not continue because the US taxpayer's back is on the verge of breaking.

Let's look at Boeing. Would they have invented the jet aircraft on their own coin if they didn't have the US government paying for it's development. Yes, but likely much slower.

You're still missing the point. There's no way to measure how helpful excessive military spending has been to economic development because the opportunity cost is invisible and therefore is not measurable whereas the productive output of the capital spent by the military industrial complex is visible and measurable.

We don't know what potential developments there would have been if that capital had remained in the private sector and had been spent on private research and development. It's also not possible to measure what opportunities were lost due to wars. How many Einsteins have lost the opportunity to further science because their lives were torn apart by war or inflation destroyed their chances of furthering their education? It's impossible to say.

To assume that the military is the best way to achieve economic or technological development is wrong. Think of all of the other technological devlopments that did not come from the military industrial complex.

Please take a few moments to spread this around to others. The guys who were on the Liberty need to be heard. Some of these guys have kept silent for 40 yrs. They were threatened with prison if they ever told their story. They are telling it now. Israel deliberately removed the IDs from their planes, ships, helicopters, etc., and attacked the Liberty with full intentions of killing everyone on board. They wanted Egypt to get the blame. Israel adopted major arrogance after doing this without so much as a slap on the hand claiming that since they got away with this, they can do anything to the US and get away with it. Johnson, the weinee who was acting as president, knew it was Israel attacking and did NOTHING!! He would not even allow the navy to come to the Liberty's rescue after the attack.

All those DARPA invented Internet are relevant from the perspective that only the governmentally funded R&D has led to the true technological breakthroughs over the past century. Private enterprises think too short term, the curse of quarterly reporting etc. However, if all the money spent on wars was sent on puclicly funded R&D, huge results would result. Spending it on war is far far les productive ,as most resources are lost, but every now and then something pops up from related reseach, which is but a side show. Think about a world where all that money would go to R&D.

All those DARPA invented Internet are relevant from the perspective that only the governmentally funded R&D has led to the true technological breakthroughs over the past century. Private enterprises think too short term, the curse of quarterly reporting etc. However, if all the money spent on wars was sent on puclicly funded R&D, huge results would result. Spending it on war is far far les productive ,as most resources are lost, but every now and then something pops up from related reseach, which is but a side show. Think about a world where all that money would go to R&D.

Well, I'm sorry, I completely disagree. With true free market competition investing in R&D is essential to the survival of any company. The profit motive is also vital to minimizing wasteful spending.

You have focused on the few technological advances that have resulted from military funding but were those few advances cost efficient when you consider the huge sums spent on defense research? Was it cost efficient or wildly wasteful? Was it a good return on investment?

Is it the fact that the military was dedicated to R&D that made the difference or was it the computer scientists behind the invention that were responsible for the development?

How many hundreds of billions or trillions spent on defense research spawned the idea of the internet and the jet engine? It was private industry that developed those concepts to the level of advancement we have today. So your contention that the private sector is too short-sighted to invest in R&D is a generalization.

Yes, the points by Anons 9:21, 10:38, 11:29 and 12:01 are very much valid I admit.

Of course no government program is terribly efficient. But technology advances are only the side effect of the primary purpose of having the most effective fighting force possible.

How this fighting force is used is a matter of policy and a separate conversation.

Personally I also think the first side effect of military spending is also very important. Every person in jail today who claims he never had a chance because of the conditions he/she were raised in, chose to say no to joining a fine institution that could have changed their lives and ushered them into the middle class.

For every billion in useful peaceful innovations produced by our half-century of high military spending, TRILLIONS have been wasted, literally blown or gone up in smoke or deteriorated (like nuclear warheads) or been stolen by corrupt contractors or misallocated by corrupt politicians, military and intelligence officials.

It didn't take tens of trillions to produce the Internet/DARPANet, I assure you.

And I assure you if cost-benefit were applied to US military expenditures (leaving out any dubious "value" gleaned from blowing things up and destroying things in unnecessary post-WWII conflicts), it would be probably the least efficient means of resource allocation and development ever seen in human history.

Every person in jail today who claims he never had a chance because of the conditions he/she were raised in, chose to say no to joining a fine institution that could have changed their lives and ushered them into the middle class.

Dude, are you talking about the military being the fine institution? Really now, the intent of which (throughout history) has been to kill and control.

That anyone might think what i wrote was serious is frankly terrifying, and a sign of how unhinged our country has become. "Pre 9/11 mindset" will be synonymous with paranoia twenty years from now.

Don't be surprised, we have an army of fake conservatives in this country that are convinced that the Muslims are sworn to kill all Americans as directed to by the Koran. The fake conservatives rant about the evil Muslims all day on their fake conservative right wing radio shows where it becomes respectable to call for the murder of muslims (they call them all terrorists of course) to call for the torture of muslims or anyone against the war for that matter and with some of these fake conservative commentators delving into the truly evil depths of saying things like muslim children should be killed before they can grow up to become terrorists.

This is the sick mentality that exists in America today on a wide scale. So don't be surprised that your comments would be taken literally. The fake conservatives say things that are far more distorted and ridiculous than your sarcastic comment on a daily basis.

And this is the sick mentality that drives many US soldiers in Iraq. The fake conservative mindset establishes US soldiers as morally righteous, gods on Earth sacrificing all for their country and demonizes the muslim as the most morally bankrupt evil on the face of the Earth. And we wonder how these atrocities in Iraq occur.

We learned about soldiers becoming sick from depleted uranium from a book published in Japan, Hibakusha Ni Natta Iraq Kikanhei (Returning Iraq Soldiers become Hibakusha). After many telephone calls Sueko was able to set up an appointment with Anthony at his house in Middletown, New York.

He continued by saying, "I didn't know what was going on and I got in touch with one of my soldiers, Sergant Ramos, and he's the one that was having the same similar problems I was having, the headaches, the headaches were BAD. Ahhh, I don't believe my headaches. And I said, 'Something doesn't seem right.' And then he made a couple of phone calls and then that's how we ended up getting tested for depleted uranium. And it came back positive, and the symptoms we were having are because of depleted uranium."

I've heard proud parents talk about how their children are out their fighting the war on terror and saving the country but this is how government bureacrats view US soldiers:

"Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy."

Henry Kissinger - Woodward and Bernstein The Final Days in chapter 14

Government bureacrats don't care about the lives of soldiers. They don't even understand war. George Bush never went to war. Dick Cheney dodged the draft for Vietnam:

Now, for the oil-soaked irony about the "war on terror" and the military spending.

When we spend money to drop bombs on terrorists, we give terrorists gas money to fill up the planes!

In a way we got ourselves into a trap. The very method of fighting this war actually fuels the opposition we are fighting. This fact does much to explain why it is quite the quagmire of oil-soaked quicksand.

Given Peak Oil, the objective of trying to occupy Iraq is to get at the last largely unsiphoned oil patch left on Earth, to plateau the peak. The much better strategy to get the oil was to have been to get buddy-buddy with Saddam all over again instead of whacking him. This method would have kept a counterweight on Iran and have cost a LOT less money. Iraq was not a terrorist hangout. Now it's a national park for terrorists. Also, Saddam kept a lid on moslem craziness having been a Stalin wannabe. Now, the place is awash in moslem craziness.

We really screwed it up and we can't fix it. If we pull out, a civil war is sure to ensue with the Sooners and Shiites trying to slash each others' throats. Like Tito of Yugoslavia fame, Saddam kept a lid on it. All we can do is sit back and let them car-bomb each other back to the Stone Age THEN get the oil. Fun fact: Saddam had a million tons of ordinance before getting deposed. That's enough for 4 million car bombs each with a 500lb IED warhead.

it was nice of dear old ike to tell us about some problems while he was leaving after spending his entire career , sitting at the table with the same people he is talking about in this speech. let us not forget. ike was a Second Lieutenant and in 3 years suddenly he was 4 star general. i suppose marrying FDR's daughter helped out in his quest to attain rank after he got out of westpoint. also dear old ike had no battlefield experience when he was appointed general of the armed forces during world war 2. he made many mistakes but his habit was to make it look like it was someone else's fault. dear old ike was a crummy president, and a lousy war general and he also was a member in good standing of the military industrial complex. it is funny i guess how these men try to asuage their consciences sometimes by telling the people about things as if that gives them some kind of forgiveness for all of the things that they have done. this criminal is probably in hell right now, awaiting final judgement.